by Yankee Born, Rebel Heart

The Ultimate Vigilante

When I was a little girl, my dad worked nights and would come home before sun-up, make himself a cup of tea, maybe a sandwich, and watch our cable-less television.

Sometimes, as I laid in bed, I would wait and listen for his keys to rattle in the front door and I’d creep downstairs because maybe I’d be lucky enough and he’d be watching some cool infomercial and if I begged and pleaded, he’d buy me something. I don’t recall that ever working. Well, except for one time when we went (without my mother) to Modell’s back when it was more like a department store and he bought me my very first pet – a school of guppies, complete with glass bowl and colorful stones. Or maybe it was Woolworth’s.

I loved those guppies. I loved those guppies so much I had to keep taking them out of the house to show all my friends and as a result…they died off one by one. “Don’t tap the glass” should have been translated to “Stop running out of the house with the fish”. No more guppies for me.

I cherish those quiet mornings with my dad. He introduced me to such great movies from his childhood to teenagedom to his adult life. One movie, in particular, started my fascination with firearms.

I found this picture of Raquel Welch as Hannie Caulder the other day, which brought back the flood of memories and the epiphany that I wanted to be a shooter when I was a little girl. My parents probably have NO idea how much this ignited my curiosity with firearms. This curiosity was kept secret, mind you, for many years. I was, unfortunately when it comes to this topic, a result of the NY Public School System and well, you can take it from there. I was the teenage girl whose friends were buying the latest Bop or Teen Beat and I was hiding my gun rags in between the pages of Seventeen magazine. That right there is another secret that my parents were not aware of.

I promise you, I was a good kid.

One of my favorite lines from this scene is “Don’t forget…you’re a target too, y’know.” Oh! and “First comes right, then comes fast”. I could go on and on; just watch it.

(I am so excited for you – this is HOLLYWOOD GOLD)

The concept that women actually shot firearms was so foreign to me that I was engrossed by this scene and commit it to memory. I had no idea who Annie Oakley was but I knew Hannie Caulder.

Her excitement and determination was contagious. You’ll see.

I was so young the first time I saw this that my mind misconstrued the time period of this movie as fact and turned it into a documentary. Here was this sexy, vulnerable woman being taught how to shoot by a man’s man who had the patience and knowledge to teach her. And with a HUGE PISTOL!!! (FYI -Robert Culp was a shooter in real life. You can see him twirlin’ in an earlier post of mine.)

I’m not sure how I wasn’t caught doing this in the backyard. In fact, in my twenties, I used to use a weighted bar at the gym. I can’t say for certain that it helped with limp-wristing, but I got myself some pretty strong & slender wrists out of it.

Sidenote: the movie does not slip into Spanish. I just couldn’t find this scene in English.

I wanted to grow up and BE her. I wanted to walk around town with a revolver on my hip wearing a blanket as a shirt (I was young, it was a blanket) and a cowboy hat. That, to me, was the ultimate in badassery. Then I grew up and realized that there were much cooler firearms out there.

3 Comments

I have never seen this movie – but after this post, I HAVE to see if I can find it to watch it. The quotes alone got me, not to mention – I always wished I was Raquel Welch (back in the 1970s). Thanks for sharing it!